Madness Udate

So, out of the 60 games that have taken place in the NCAA Tournament, I picked 35 of them correctly. I also picked 3 out of 4 that are in the Final Four. The one I didn't pick was UCLA. I picked my Aggies to beat them for more reason than the fact that I graduated from Texas A&M. I picked them because they match up well with UCLA and they proved that. In fact, they really should have won that game. They had it right up until the last. Kevin Love is incredible!

There's been more madness in March in my household besides basketball. Last week, I got sick. I started throwing up; and not just food. Yes. That's right. I threw up blood! It wasn't just a few drops of blood, either. It was more than just streaks. I threw up a bunch of blood. It was a little scary. The scarier thing was that I went to the closest emergency room, sat there with Irene for 6 1/2 hours and never saw a doctor. It was 5:30, Thursday morning and my stomach had finally stopped hurting enough that I could rest. So, I told Irene we could just go home and I would call my doctor later. Well, I saw my doctor Thursday afternoon and the conclusion is that I have an ulcer. The nurse asked, "Do you have a lot of stress in your life?" I didn't really respond. The list is probably longer than she needed to hear. I'm really trying to hand a lot of it over to God. It's not easy! I get so worried about things and just kind of shut down. It's my defense mechanism. Well, the advantage to this is that the weight-loss incurred sent me down to the 180's. I am now about 188 lbs. I haven't seen this weight in probably 10+ years. I still have about 10-12 to reach my goal. Hopefully, once I can start working out, I'll drop the weight pretty easily.

March Madness

So, this is a huge time of year in our household. I can remember back a few years ago when Juan Dixon was playing for Maryland and they won the National Championship. Irene and I sat right next to each other watching all but maybe one or two of the televised games. We both really get into it. We both like to see close games and we both enjoy seeing the underdog win. One thing I've never done is actually fill out a bracket, beforehand. I just never cared whether I could predict the wins. I just like to see the teams play well. This year, I filled one out. Nobody will know but me whether I picked the wins or not. In the end, I'll probably say how many I called but I did pick a lot of upsets. Even so, I picked three #1 seeds to make the Final Four. I don't know how that happened and I'm not going to say which ones either. I just couldn't see the games going any other way. So, we'll see how it goes. I expect lots of close, hard-fought games. I'm anxious for tomorrow!

Anger

This is an interesting topic that I had a brief discussion about on another blog. It is related to my previous blog on losing faith. It seems that many people lose their faith because they are angry at God. The debate was/is, is it okay to be angry at God. The other blogger's thoughts and many of the comments were a resounding, "Yes!" My thoughts, not really. I think anger is a dangerous poison to mess around with. Now, I DO get angry. I DO have a bad temper, at times. The thing is, even though life really sucks sometimes, I'm very careful about blaming God and being angry at Him. One of the commenters on the other blog mentioned the end of Job when God spoke to Job through a storm. The commenter said that God justifies Job for being angry, if I remember correctly. I went back yesterday and read this story to see exactly what God said. Now, Job tends to be known as that guy in the bible that was tested to the extreme and never doubted God. Actually, at the end of Job, he starts reaching the end of his rope and begins to question God for all the bad things that had happened. He is worked up even more by some of his friends. Then, God appears in a storm and speaks. In a nutshell, God says, "Who do you think you are to question what I do? Were you around when the world was made? Did you put barriers on the oceans? Do you have the power to feed all the beings of the earth?" He pretty much tells Job that he has a purpose for everything he does and is not one to be questioned. So, I don't think it's okay to be angry at God. In fact, we know that God didn't make all the bad stuff happen to Job. He merely allowed it to happen. There's a difference. Job's response to God, "Sorry!"